A stakeholder in Energise Barnsley, Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council, has through their ‘Low Carbon Agenda’ fitted over 600 air source heat pumps (ASHPs) in domestic dwellings, replacing gas boilers, through the tenant management company Berneslai Homes.

With the aim to reduce carbon dioxide emissions across the borough and improve the lives of residents in Barnsley, the council and community energy society has taken steps for the creation of low carbon generation of electricity and the electrification of heat in domestic dwellings.

The Barnsley Domestic Demand Side Response (DSR) project targets new build properties (Code 4 Sustainable Homes) with already installed dual purpose ASHPs and solar PV, and adds a smart battery and control system, to generate analytical household energy demand data, which in turn, will form the basis of a demand side response commercial model, benefiting tenants, national grid and the wider low carbon community.

Energise Barnsley is the lead partner for the collaboration. The other collaboration partners for the feasibility study are Oxford Brookes University (academic partner), Upside Energy (aggregator) and Sonnen Technologies (battery manufacturer).

This project aims to use the smart battery, thermal store and thermal value of the homes with ASHPs to shift peak demand of the homes away from peak national electricity demand, and to further flatten the profile spikes of electricity demand from these houses, whilst incentivizing the tenants to react to a price based demand side response trigger.